


The Nutcracker

by Odamaki



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Christmas Magic, Dark Magic, Dolls, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Magical Bond, Nutcracker AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5515976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is unimpressed with Uncle Rudy's present. A doll? What does he want with a doll?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nutcracker

**Nutcracker**

The gift is early. Uncle Rudy has never been well known for his sense of proprietary, but give the man his due, he is punctual. The box is as long as Sherlock’s forearm and twice as thick. He drops it carelessly on the table as he enters the flat.

“Something for you, dear?” Mrs. Hudson asks, squinting at the postmarks with great curiosity. “Ooh, from abroad. Who’s that then?”

“Uncle Rudy,” Sherlock says disdainfully. “Must have had a falling out with the family. He never sends gifts. God knows what he expects me to do.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Mrs. Hudson chides. She gives the box a little shake. “There’s something quite heavy in it.”

“Leave it alone.”

“It’s just exciting. I like it when you get presents. Don’t you like it?”

“Hardly,” Sherlock says, not untruthfully. With the exception of Mycroft, people never know what he likes or wants so they never buy him anything he can appreciate. Mycroft, contrarily, has all the capability but no interest at all in acting on it. Coldly, he denies Mrs. Hudson the pleasure of satisfying her curiosity by shoving the offending package under the sofa and going back to his experiments.

There it stays until the small hours of the night, after the clocks have chimed the final twelve hours and Sherlock has run out of litmus and patience, and the whole of the street is hushed and sleeping. He throws himself down on the sofa, forgetting the item. It’s not until one of his hands brushes against it, that he recalls its existence.

With some displeasure he fishes it out by the strings and drops it into his lap. He sniffs at it. It smells of paper and something indescribable yet familiar; a touch of the outdoors, maybe. Sherlock can’t be sure. He picks at the knots until they give and the brown paper falls away in crisp folds to be discarded on the floor. The box is made of wood stained a deep, deep red; Sherlock smoothes his fingers against it and can’t help but admire the lustre. Old, he thinks, very old.

It’s of the correct size to hold a bottle of something, he thinks, but he can’t feel the characteristic shift and slosh of liquid inside. There are no markings on the outside either, the box is blank.

There’s a note. A few lines scrawled on card in Rudy’s muddled script.

_Sherlock-_   
_Your mother says you’re being a miserable hermit. Found this poor chap on one of my excursions and thought you could keep each other company._   
_Don’t be unkind. He’s been through a lot. Patch him up, there’s a lad._   
_-Ruby._

Sherlock clucks with distemper, dismissing the difference in name as a blot of the pen. What ludicrous thing has the stupid man come up with now? He fiddles with the fastenings, which are stiff and small, and finally levers open the lid of the box.

It is a doll.

Sherlock lets the lid fall flat against his leg and stares at it. His first thoughts are all indignation. A doll? What the devil did he want with a doll? Was this a joke? Rudy has a poor sense of humour, that’s to be sure, and Sherlock doesn’t like a joke unless he’s the one to laugh last and laugh loudest.

Nonetheless, it is… like nothing Sherlock’s ever seen.

The doll is male, which is one thing in its favour. The eyes are closed as though it is sleeping; yet as Rudy’s note hinted, it doesn’t seem to be at peace. The mouth is drawn down in the corners in an unhappy, grieving expression, and the brows are likewise tensed.

It has been painted masterfully, Sherlock thinks, looking at it. The face is uncannily human in expression, with nothing of the flawless complexion one normally sees on miniatures. He looks closer and notes with incredulity that the eyebrows are actual hair. Minuscule, each one planted at the root as if growing. Eyelashes too, which flutter slightly with his breath as he examines the face. It is remarkable.

Sherlock stands, setting the box aside and fetches his magnifying glass from his coat. Upon further inspection, he believes it is made from real human hair, rather than the poorer horsehair imitations. How did they get it so fine? They must have split individual hairs to do it. The detail doesn’t end there. The little red army uniform is perfectly hand-stitched with real miniature fastenings. Buttons so tiny that Sherlock can barely feel them under his fingers. It’s a curiosity, for certain.

Strange to say he can’t determine what the body is made from either. Certainly not porcelain as it is too dark in colour and slightly warm to touch. Nor could it be wax; the surface is too smooth and soft, and it doesn’t mark when he scratches at it with a fingernail- some kind of resin, then? But that doesn’t seem right either, for the doll is fully pose-able, yet has no obviously visible joints.

It’s as he’s moving the limbs around that he feels it. A slight click. He feels through the fabric and gives a little tut of disappointment. One of the shoulders is broken. It takes him a while to manage it without tearing off any of the buttons, but upon removing the jacket and shirt he can see the flaw. There is a crack in the material on the shoulder, just by the collarbone, perfectly circular as though someone had tried to punch through it with a nail.

“A pity,” Sherlock says. He cradles the doll in one hand, marvels at the fact that it is perfectly made even under its clothes. There are freckles over it’s shoulder blades and the artist has, in a risqué move, included nipples.

Sherlock lays the doll down on a cushion and picks up the box. There is a layer of velvet that the doll had been laying on, and at the bottom, there is a little drawer. Sherlock pulls it open and tips out the contents into his hand. A soldier’s kitbag in perfect miniature with other sundries, amounting to no less than two more shirts, two pairs of stockings, a pair of shoes, a pair of trousers, a greatcoat, what appears to be an extra pair of soles and heels for the shoes, a woolen blanket, a tiny box that he cannot open, a selection of brushes, a razor that is too small to open, another box and a strap that he assumes must complete the shaving kit, a tin, a powder flask, a tiny mallet, a bag, a belt and a pouch, a second belt for a sword, a whetstone and a canteen.

Perfected above all are the sword and the rifle. The former slides from its sheath as though it were made yesterday. Sherlock tests it against his thumb and is staggered by how sharp it is. It leaves a mark in his skin like a paper-cut. Carefully he puts it away. The rifle is a gunpowder-and-ball type of firearm, which explains some of the little bags in the kit, with a wicked bayonet on the end.

“Napoleonic,” Sherlock comments, intrigued. He puts it all away and as he’s about to being the task of getting the soldier back into his shirt, he notices something else under the velvet. He pulls on it and it unfurls; a scrap of white silk, with a dark stain on one corner. Sherlock narrows his eyes. He knows the rufescent hue of an old bloodstain when he sees one.

There is writing on the silk in a scratchy hand, the ink faded to a filthy orange, but still legible. Sherlock goes over it slowly, parsing the old copperplate and reading aloud.

_Breath begets breath,_   
_Wakes from death misbegotten,_   
_‘till the end of the twelfth:_   
_John Hamish Watson._

“A code?” Sherlock wonders.

“Please. No.”

The voice is so small he thinks something has slipped from his mind palace at first, and then a second tiny noise gives him a better sense of the direction it’s coming from. He looks down.

Blue eyes look up at him from a face fixed with fright. Sherlock feels his mouth fall open. He can’t move. The doll has none of the same handicap.

Sherlock sees him react though a fog of disbelief. The doll- the man, the small, impossible man- lifts a hand and touches his own bared chest and his expression turns to horror. He moves back, boots slipping on the cushion, until he has put it between them and all Sherlock can see is the top of his head and his shoulders rising and falling in a panic.

Sherlock lowers the silk to his lap and then, he has to see. He has to see the man move with his own eyes because he doubts his sanity. He reaches for the cushion.

“Don’t!” The voice is curt and authoritative enough to make Sherlock’s hand stop. The face however, lifted over the curvature of the cushion, is desperate. One hand is up defensively, the other feeling in one of the boots; a knife.

Sherlock unfurls his hands in a gesture of peace, still transfixed. He sniffed the packet, perhaps it contained traces of a powerful hallucinogen or else it may have been painted in liquid form on the skin of the doll and absorbed through his fingers, but this is the most lucid and most powerful trip Sherlock has ever experienced. He would like to look away around the flat to see what else is going haywire yet he’s afraid if he does, the man will vanish.

The man seems to be fading regardless, Sherlock realizes. He flickers in and out of sight and-

“Oh, no, that’s me,” Sherlock murmurs. “Tunnel vision. Spots. Prelude to syncope…”

His ears are singing. He is aware of one last glimpse of the dolls’ shocked face and then his vision narrows to a grey pinprick and the next thing he feels is the crack of the floor against the back of his head.

________

When Sherlock revives the man is crouched on the edge of the sofa like a little Pan, leaning on the tip of his sword. In the time Sherlock’s been unconscious, which can’t have been long, he’s taken the opportunity to dress and arm himself. The kitbag is also reassembled and close at hand.

“Don’t rise too fast,” the man warns.

Sherlock blinks muzzily, feeling at the back of his head. There’s a bit of a bump but he believes he will live.

“How many fingers?”

“One,” Sherlock replies.

“Y’not dead then.”

Sherlock struggles up onto his elbows, and they regard each other warily for a long quiet moment.

“You’re Ruby’s nephew?”

“Rudy.”

“Ruby now,” the man replies, unfazed. He straightens as Sherlock stands and he can’t help but admire the doll’s bravery. Both hands rest on the sword and Sherlock has no doubt that despite the monstrous difference in size, if he made a threatening motion, the doll would draw the blade and have at him.

“John Hamish Watson,” Sherlock says, dazed, pointing at him.

The other pauses. “John,” he corrects. “Just John.”

“Are you real?”

“Yes.”

“Alive?”

“For now,” John replies, soberly. “What day is it?”

“December 6th.”

John looks momentarily stricken. “Lost a week,” he murmurs.

“What are you?” Sherlock breathes. He can see the other swallow, blink, the tiny twitching of his fingers. There are lungs or a facsimile thereof moving in the soldier’s chest because it rises and falls and if that is the case then his body must therefore contain blood also and a heart and who knows what else. Sherlock is lost for a moment in a whirlwind of scientific query.

The man is human but as small as a newborn, yet adult. How does that affect his metabolism? The stomach must be small yet that doesn’t preclude the need for calories; a shrew needs to consume greater than it’s bodyweight daily just to survive, never mind thrive. Sherlock hazards an age between 30 and 45 but the smallness of the man’s features make it difficult to pinpoint more precisely. How does sound affect him? Would a loud sound be more damaging to such small ears in the same way that a baby’s hearing is more easily affected or does the doll have more resilience?

“You’re staring,” John says bluntly.

“You are worth staring at.”

John looks a little awkward at such candor. “What’s your name?”

“Sherlock. How old are you?”

“I was born in 1775.”

Sherlock can hardly swallow. He has a mouthful of inquiries and his head is spinning with the way the bedrock of his whole understanding of the universe is tilting wildly away from him.

" _Two hundred and forty years_ ,” Sherlock breathes. “How? _How!_ ”

John has no answer, or else he won’t give one. Sherlock plucks up the silk with shaking hands and reads it again. “ ‘ _Breath begets breath_ ,’ clear enough, I evidently exhaled on you as I was examining- ‘ _Wakes from death misbegotten_ ,’ Death, death? Were you killed?”

“I was shot-” John replies, touching his leg. “I don’t remember dying.” The words seem practiced. Sherlock assumes they must be. From 1775 and his scrappy knowledge of history, he can pin John’s living age to be in his mid-30’s which must mean he’s been explaining himself once a year for 200 years at least.

“ ‘‘ _till the end of the twelfth: John Hamish Watson._ ’ Then this only lasts until the end of December?”

“Christmas,” John corrects quietly. “Until midnight on the 25th of December, and then…” he gestures to the box. Then blind and deaf and dumb and senseless.

Something of the horror bleeds into Sherlock’s understanding. “You live only a month of each year.”

“Yes.”

“Why? What purpose?”

John gives a dry, bitter little smile. “I grant wishes.”

_______

Sherlock doesn’t sleep. He expects to close his eyes and for John to vanish back into the ether of his own madness, but he remains. John is reserved but cordial. He answers the questions Sherlock poses, and when he doesn’t, Sherlock detects that he genuinely cannot, or else that it’s painful and so he resolves to fill the gaps with his own intellect.

  
Over the next twenty-four hours he determines that John is not joking about the wishes, and that he has virtually no control over it. That should he survive until the last minute of Christmas day, Sherlock as his keeper will receive whatever it is that his heart most desires.

  
This is very woolly logic as far as Sherlock is concerned but John shrugs and he is forced to accept it for what it is, as much as he is able to. Sherlock will not even need to verbalise his own wish, it seems. It is merely that whatever he, deep down, wants most, will be given, whether he wants it or not.

  
Yet he has the feeling that John is holding something back from him nonetheless. For something so kindly as granting wishes, John seems to despair of the idea he will be forced to do so again. This is a sobering thought, and Sherlock would pay good money to know what other people may have wished for, deep in their hearts. He is not so enamored with the human race as to imagine that it has all been good.

  
Lucky old Uncle Rudy, though, to be so easily and fully transformed into Aunt Ruby with none of the usual pain nor expense.

  
John passes the rest of the night in the bedroom upstairs. It’s an enormous space for someone who can barely climb the stairs to reach it, yet it feels fitting. John is an adult and too dignified to be treated like a toy. He moves books off of the shelf and makes himself a fae camp there, like a benevolent hobgoblin. His needs are minimal. He asks for a candle and matches, which provide him with heat and light and a campfire. Sherlock provides him with a mug of clean water and a selection of food, and they diplomatically don’t discuss the empty mustard pot, which serves for John’s personal convenience. Sherlock rinses it out in the bathroom sink the following morning, and tries not to show his intense curiosity about how the whole process works too keenly.

  
Throughout the following day, John keeps to himself, except when he can’t avoid Sherlock’s questions. It strikes Sherlock that this is a deliberate move on John’s part. He wonders how many people he has befriended and then lost over so many years. As Sherlock understands it, this month is all they’ll have. Once John returns to his doll state, he will never again wake at the touch of Sherlock’s breath.

  
They make no overtures of anything beyond scientific interest on Sherlock’s half and cool reserve on John’s side until evening. Sherlock occupies the living room, still desperate to learn more, but John has asked for an hour or two alone, and Sherlock has felt obliged to give it to him. He smells the faint odour of bacon cooking and knows that John has concocted some sort of mess over the candle from the ham and other portions of food Sherlock provided him. He is wonderfully independent. Sherlock would love to merely observe him doing his chores.

  
As an aid to thought, and to distract him from spying, Sherlock plays the violin. He deliberately chooses pieces from the late 18th century, on a meandering tour from England to France to Russia and across time up to the mid-1800′s. He is plucking his way slowly through a pizzicato when he smells the tobacco. It is too pungent for John to be tucked in the bookcase. Slowly, Sherlock approaches the door.

  
The candle burns at the top of the stairs, casting a faint orange glow. John has come half way down the flight, his form a small bundle on the step like a discarded piece of clothing. He has the blanket around his shoulders and his eyes show in the reflection of the cherry glow of his pipe.  
John coughs, self-consciously.

  
“You smoke.”

“Bad habit.”

“Come down and smoke with me,” Sherlock offers. “Have a drink.”

He sees something inside John baulk, and something greater crave the interaction. Whatever he’s doing, whatever John’s story is, Sherlock knows that something in the music has slipped through the mask and John is curious about him now perhaps just as much. He watches as John’s resolve crumbles like sand before a wave.

“Alright.”

He refuses help; Sherlock doesn’t insult him by offering anyway. John throws the blanket up around his neck and, pipe clamped between his teeth, clambers down one step at a time. He’s stiff by the time he reaches the bottom, and limps towards the hearth. Sherlock follows, his only offer to set a cushion from the armchair on the floor.

“Can I sit up?” John asks, pointing to the chair. “I prefer a corner to lean in.”

“Go ahead.”

The seat of the chair is level with John’s head. He looks at it tiredly, and then as Sherlock moves to fetch books to make a stair for him, gives in.

“Lift me.”

Sherlock stoops and sets his hand as a platform for him. John grunts as he climbs onto it, grasping Sherlock’s thumb and shirtsleeve for stability. His hands are warm, Sherlock notes; the life seems to shine out of every part of him.

He lets John settle and pours them both a drink, his own in a tumbler, John’s in the lid from a miniature bottle of whiskey. They set the ashtray between them, and Sherlock lights up, carefully to keep his smoke out of John’s face.

“Cheers,” Sherlock says, settling in his own chair. John smiles, ever so slightly.

“Cheers.” he replies.

They drink. Sherlock sets the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lifts the violin to his shoulder. “Any preference?”

“Anything but carols,” John replies, sounding weary. “Play me something new.”

“Something modern,” Sherlock suggests and John nods.

“Something modern,” he agrees, with something that sounds like longing. Sherlock draws the bow across the strings and wonders how it is, living as an anachronism. To never be allowed to progress like the rest of the world. John’s thirst for something new agrees with him on an innate level. He can’t help but pass him one of his own rare smiles.

John, hands cupped around the bottle cap, his pipe glowing, for the first time lifts his lips in something like a welcome.


	2. Warming Up By The Fire

**Warming Up By The Fire.**

“How did you know it was me?” Sherlock asks. John lowers his sword and relaxes his stance.

“Mrs. Hudson always stops for a moment on the turn of the stairs. Besides,” John feels the balance of the sword again in his hand. “You’re loud.”

Sherlock removes his coat and hangs it on the peg, secretly pleased to hear that John’s got things so well figured out. He turns back and takes to his armchair, watching John rather self-consciously move through the last of his drill. He has removed his shirt and Sherlock watches with mute fascination how the muscle moves under his skin. The only blight is the damage to his shoulder.

Finally John stops, putting the sword back in its sheath and wiping at his brow.

“You left the remote upon your desk,” John says. Sherlock glances over. He has.

“I’m sorry.” He retrieves it and sets it by the hearth. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

“Nay, I know.”

John rubs sweat from his face with his shirttail and pulls it on over his head. He watches TV and surfs the Internet with relative ease for someone born more than one hundred years ago, although, as he reminds Sherlock, he has had one month of each year to catch up with the world.

“There was news about a war today,” John adds. Sherlock shrugs.

“Isn’t there always.”

“Yes,” John says wearily. “That’s one thing that never changes.” He sits on the hearth, absently toying with the handle of his sword. “The brutality of men with power.”

“You were a soldier,” Sherlock comments, curious.

“Look where that got me.” John reaches for his red jacket. Now that he’s stopped moving, Sherlock can see him shiver. The hearth must be cold; in fact the flat has probably been chilly most of the day and even he can feel it.

“Allow me.” Sherlock lowers himself to one knee and fetches kindling from the scuttle, which he stacks into the fireplace, adding to it until he’s placed enough to set a match to.

John watches him work in silence, settling himself back against the foot of the red armchair. Somehow they still haven’t built the stack of books for John to climb the chair as he pleases. There’s one by the sofa, where John likes to sit and type with necessary slowness, but instead they have developed a kind of ritual whereby John waits until Sherlock just lowers a hand and gives him a boost to the chair. It’s the only contact they have.

The flames spit and shudder, growing slowly up the back of the fireplace until the wood starts to catch. The smokes rises, and when Sherlock looks down to see if his offered hand would be welcome, John simply moves closer to the fire. Not yet.

“Do you find the flat cold?”

“It’s winter,” John says neutrally. He stands before the fire like he’s on guard and then the warmth seems to permeate through his uniform and he relaxes, arms folded across his chest.

“It’s 2015. You don’t need to be cold,” Sherlock replies.

“There’s not much to be done. I’ve a blanket if I need it.”

“Hardly practical. I’ll find you something.”

“Don’t fuss yourself.”

“I don’t consider it a fuss, John,” Sherlock says softly. John says nothing and Sherlock reads in his posture that he’s embarrassed. It’s surprised him how naturally very proud John is. He has a real distaste for what he calls ‘charity’, and Sherlock wonders if this is something born in John from his human life or something he has learnt in the years since.

The fire mellows from a roar to a crackle. Sherlock turns on the radio for the opera- Verdi’s Rigoletto. Not entirely to his taste but he closes his eyes and listens for the contralto, and hopes Irene is enjoying her new name and life in New York.

“What’s it about?” John asks presently.

“Murder, curses, a fool, a girl and an assassin.”

“A normal story then,” John replies cynically. He feels at his leg. He glances to the seat of the red armchair and Sherlock takes the hint to lean down and offer him his arm. The fire heats their legs and starts to chase away the damp cold of the flat. John stretches his legs out on the seat, and Sherlock regards him.

“How were you wounded?”

“I told you, I was shot.”

“In the leg. I meant your shoulder.”

John lays a hand on the broken patch of his body and his expression sours. “T’isn’t a pretty story.”

“I’m not squeamish, John.”

John considers him closely for a long moment. “You want to know what I am, Sherlock, and there’s no answers for that. I don’t know what I am. I’m a mistake. As for this,” he gestures to his shoulder again. “It was a boy.”

“A boy?”

“Mm. A boy. How much harm can a lad do, I thought, clumsiness, maybe, or neglect. You don’t expect…”

“On purpose?”

“A drill. Like you, he wanted to know what I was made of.”

Sherlock’s mouth is dry. It feels like John has slapped at him. “I would never hurt you.”

“No,” John says cautiously in agreement. “You’re not the same. You treat me decently.”

“He did not. What happened?”

John looks into the fire, leaning on one fist. “I don’t know. The drill came down and then there was a light like the Christmas Day light and then the next thing I knew I was in a box. The same year- I stayed that until Christmas Day and then the wish came and went and I was somewhere else with someone else and I never saw him again.”

Sherlock’s mind flies. “What did he wish for?”

“Nothing good,” John answers, shaking his head. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“My apologies,” Sherlock murmurs. He folds his hands before his chin and thinks about John’s situation with increasing sadness. He has further questions and yet he can deduce the answers. The thought of Christmas discomforts him. He has, despite everything, no desire to have his wish granted if only because he cannot say with any confidence what it is. He feels as though they are both barreling towards a precipice and cruelly, John has been thrown down it so many times before.

“It’s fine. Let’s just enjoy the time I have,” John says. He rests his hands in his lap. “That’s a good fire. No smoke to it. I haven’t been in a house with a real fire for many years.”

“I admit I should make more use of it.” As if in atonement, Sherlock leans in and drops another log into the flames.

John closes his eyes and then reaches down and tugs off his boots. He flexes his toes, sticking them out towards the fire and then begins the familiar process of filling his pipe.

“You’ll get cancer,” Sherlock remarks. John looks at him from under his eyebrows, his eyes glittering with a sudden flash of humor. He lights his pipe with a flint and puffs on it, eyes narrowing with pleasure.

“Don’t take away one of my few joys in life.”

“There’s always drink,” Sherlock suggests. John makes an encouraging gesture and Sherlock obliges though he knows he shouldn’t egg on John’s intemperance. Nevertheless, he enjoys these evenings with John. The man relaxes and lets more things slip. Or at least he talks more. The narrator on the radio explains the third act of the opera, a complex roundabout of betrayal and love stories.

John sips from his cap and then gestures towards Sherlock. “You don’t have a woman?”

“No. Not my…thing.”

John considers this. “A man?”

Sherlock’s breath catches just a little. “No.”

“Alone then. Like me.” John nods slightly.

“You never married?”

“I was in the army,” John answers, and leaves that to Sherlock’s interpretation.

Outside it is overcast and the road is starting to spot with rain that will never become more than a drizzle. It has been dim and gloomy since the middle of the afternoon and the night promises to be dark and cold. Inside, the fire spills orange light all over them and makes the shadows softer and friendlier. John sprawls luxuriously across the seat of the armchair, one foot bobbing slightly to the beat of the opera.

“Tell me the story,” he asks again, nodding towards the radio.

Sherlock tells him them all.


	3. Family Traditions

**Family Traditions.**

“You don’t celebrate much,” John observes. He has been living with Sherlock for just nine days; it feels like a lifetime already.

“No.”

“Are you a heretic?” John asks, with blunt curiosity but little judgment. His word choice was born in him two hundred years ago. It makes Sherlock smile.

“I suppose I am,” he says, not a bit ashamed. John too accepts this with faint admiration, if not agreement.

“I’ve noticed that. Year on year, there’s less faith.”

“Do you feel England suffers for it?”

John considers, pacing slowly between the salt and pepper shakers on the breakfast table, each as high as his shin. “Hard to say,” he concludes. “A lot’s changed; some better and some worse. Some problems remain but in a different form for a different class of people, but coming through the reign of Victoria, I’ll tell you this much-“ He looks up at Sherlock. “I’ve gotten less worried about being burnt as a familiar.”

“Has anyone tried?”

“Holy water, once or twice, but oftentimes when I find myself with a religious man, I recite the Lord’s Prayer and that always calms them down. Then it’s just convincing them I’m no messenger for the other side.”

Sherlock can’t imagine a less likely angel.

John folds his arms and leans on the rim of the milk jug, looking up at Sherlock. Then he points at him conversationally.

“Do you have no family?”

“A brother,” Sherlock admits.

“You don’t see eye to eye,” John comments.

“Not much,” Sherlock agrees.

“He won’t be coming for Christmas, then? No…seasonal truce?”

“One very much hopes not,” Sherlock says, pulling a face at the thought. He folds his hands in thought and regards John for a moment. The other’s face remains impassive, but Sherlock fancies he sees something else in John’s eyes. “Surely you must be glad of a break from the trappings of December.”

John considers this for a long moment, drumming his fingers on the ceramic of the jug and then shrugs. “Familiarity breeds contempt,” he says, “and a change is as good as a rest, yet… when life is unpredictable, the season is something I can rely on.”

He stares down into the milk for a moment that Sherlock doesn’t dare to interrupt, and then he clears his throat.

“Listen to me talking like an old woman. No, I’ve no real fondness for Christmas; I’ve no objection to taking a turn without it.”

Sherlock inclines his head, inhales and then holds the breath there, full of an idea that wouldn’t have surprised him when he was a child, but feels almost alien from disuse now.

“What,” he begins slowly, “Would you do, John? If you had a choice.”

John’s brows both rise and knit in puzzlement.

“A day,” Sherlock offers. “To do as you wish. What would you do?”

John’s eyes pass away from Sherlock into some other world of possibility and it’s evident that this is a question that John has no more considered an answer to of late, than Sherlock has considered asking it. He takes so long to answer that Sherlock starts to feel that he may have made some social blunder but when he opens his mouth to explain himself, John holds up a hand.

“No, let me think.”

It takes John a long while. He sits on the lid of the butter dish, chin planted in his fists like Rodin has sculpted him. Sherlock says nothing to influence him; he’s genuinely interested in John’s answer.

Finally, when Sherlock has nearly lost himself in a reverie of his recent exploits as a mythologer, John raises his head.

“I have an answer.”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s strange; I had a ready answer and then I thought of all the things I miss, but it’s been so long since I had them that maybe I don’t need them anymore and so all I can come up with, that feels right, is that I’d like to attend service.”

“Church?” John has never struck him as especially fervent, and the thought plants a new uneasy idea in Sherlock’s mind that if mortal men can live as immortal dolls, what else might be true?

“It’s strange,” John repeats, “but yes.”

Sherlock weighs his impulses against his better self and for the first time in a long time, his better self wins out. He picks up his phone.

“Which denomination?”

“Anglican,” John says, and Sherlock tuts at himself. That should have been obvious.

He looks up from his phone. “Are you quite sure?”

“Yes,” John says, misinterpreting Sherlock’s question.

“It will be dangerous. Crowded. High risk of being seen.”

John’s face clears with comprehension and he straightens perceptibly. “Yes, God, yes,” he says, blind to both his blasphemy and his irony. “Let me see London again.”

\---

They go by foot and after dark, both to prolong the experience and make it safer.  The pockets of the Belstaff are deep and with some squeezing, John can just about sit himself in one of them like he’s riding a palanquin. With his knees pressed up to his chin and the flap of the pocket shielding him from the drizzle and unwelcome eyes, it is not a comfortable ride, but it is thrilling.

Sherlock feels John shift against his hip, and keeps one hand flat against the breadth of the pocket like a drunk with a concealed bottle.

He tours slowly down the river, giving John a breath of the old and the new, the ancient familiar landmarks with their scrubbed modernized faces (‘Nothing’s black!’ John comments), and the dazzle of the alien new.

On a quiet corner of a rooftop, John stands until up to his waist is free of the coat and leans out over Sherlock’s hand to look at the lights strung up all over and the glimmering wheel of the London Eye.

“Wondrous,” John says. Sherlock curls his fingers as a sign of appreciation.

He chooses a small, local church; the kind where the congregation is elderly and short sighted and likely to be disregarded if they come out with tales of little talking men. And few.

They sit at the back, ignore the friendly beckoning of the vicar, and occupy a whole pew to themselves. John slips free of Sherlock’s pocket and sits cross-legged on a fold of his coat. Sherlock shifts slightly on the hard wooden boards and feels a twinge of jealousy. He checks his watch. This surely can’t last more than an hour, can it? With that in mind, he’s glad John isn’t a Catholic.

The organ groans and the thin congregation shuffle to their feet for the opening hymn. Sherlock looms, an out of place vulture at the back, sticking up above the crowd even with his head lowered. John stands at military ease on the pew beside him, gaze fixed ahead though he can see nothing.

The opening hymn is younger than John but the man lifts his voice to it anyway, and proves a knowledge of the words that exceeds Sherlock’s, who moves his lips in case anyone is looking. If anyone did, they would think he had a peculiar voice for a man so large. John’s voice is not strong, but he can hold the tune and the pitch is masculine.

They sit again after the final notes have finished skirling from the organ. The vicar mounts the pulpit and begins an introduction to the season, of which Sherlock hears not a word and John seems transfixed by.

‘What are you looking for?’ Sherlock wonders, trying to fathom him. John is forced to sit like a toddler, his legs stuck straight out before him on the wood, and there’s a kind of melancholy in his expression that grows rather than diminishes.

Whatever solace he hopes for, he doesn’t seem to be finding it in the distant ceiling of the church, though that’s where he pins his gaze. The vicar speaks in a pleasant tone and he begins a recital of an Invitation to Confession.

_Lord of grace and truth,_

_we confess our unworthiness_

_to stand in your presence as your children. We have sinned:_

The congregation one and all, old and small and the smallest at the back mutter under their breaths a reply.

“Forgive and heal us.”

Sherlock stares at the backs of heads in hats and set curls and feels that he will never understand what compels people to do this.

_The Virgin Mary accepted your call_

_to be the mother of Jesus._

_Forgive our disobedience to your will. We have sinned:_

Several rows ahead a teenage girl tugs on the ends of her hair, looking for split ends until her grandmother elbows her to remind her to chime in.

 **“** Forgive and heal us.”

Sherlock has heard the arguments before, that it is tradition. That it is moral. That it is a binding experience for families of all types (though he doubts that last is true), yet it feels strange to merge John in with this.

John feels him looking down at him, and briefly he scowls. Sherlock looks away. He supposes it is uncouth to stare at someone while they are praying. Something a tourist would do. Instead he stares at his feet and wishes the accusations were over.

_Your Son our Saviour_

_was born in poverty in a manger._

_Forgive our greed and rejection of your ways. We have sinned:_

“Forgive and heal us.”

_Forgive our self-interest and lack of vision. We have sinned:_

Sherlock thinks, if he has been wrong about the world all his life, there is little hope for him now. He has no doubt broken too many commandments.

_Forgive our reluctance to seek you. We have sinned:_

John seems to take it a little personally too. Or else the thought grieves him. Sherlock can see what he’s looking for now- not salvation just forgiveness. It’s still not clear why John feels he needs it in the first place.

As if to shake off the collective guilt and keep his audience with him, the vicar hurries them into another hymn. The organ coughs and they stumble straight into the first line of O Thou Joyful, O Thou Wonderful.

Sherlock doesn’t make the effort to mime this time; instead he reads the words, hunting them down in the program left on the pew. John glances at him, and then gives him a rather solid punch to the thigh. He looks down.

“Sing,” John mouths.

It’s not like the tune is difficult- these hymns are designed for people with musical talent of a specifically regular duh-duh-duh quality. Sherlock scowls but opens his mouth. He has a good voice, though he rarely squanders it on singing. John folds his hands into his pockets and sways slightly from side to side.

_“Loud hosannas singing,_

_and all praises bringing,_

_may thy love, may thy love with us abide.”_

If only.

The service goes on in much the same pattern; a prayer, a comment, a carol and a reminder to be good and never mind Father Christmas, repeat. John seems to take little comfort from the words and conversely plenty from the music, in an up-down of emotion that leaves Sherlock confused.

At the end they finish with a prayer and a moment of silence for them to tag on their own private thoughts. John closes his eyes and touches his own clenched hands to his forehead.

Sherlock looks at the ceiling and tries, yet again, to fathom what it is he will wish for. He tries to fathom John, and can’t. It’s frustrating. Just in case anyone is listening, he looks down at John at the last possible moment and thinks, as loudly as he can, ‘let me know you’.

As soon as it’s over, he has to scoop John into his pocket and get out of the church like they’ve robbed it. They scurry off into the dark, avoiding the milling people until they’re in the cold backstreets with nothing but cats and dustbins for company. 

Sherlock lifts the flap of his pocket.

“Not too stifled?” 

“No, I’m fine.”

Sherlock pauses. He would like to ask if John enjoyed it, but it doesn’t seem to be the right question to ask. Instead he says, “Is there anything else you’d like to do.”

“No,” John says. “Let’s go back now. We’ve had our outing; it’s best not to tempt fate.”

Sherlock agrees and sets his face for Baker Street. John retreats as soon as they are home and Sherlock lets him go reluctantly.  He sits in his armchair and slowly bows out the refrain to O Thou Joyful, O Thou Wonderful. 

“What are you running from?” he murmurs.


	4. Christmas Without You

**Christmas Without You**

Sherlock goes out for most of the morning. He has an appointment with a librarian who knows something about someone’s treatise called ‘The Living Doll’. It’s old and delicate, she explains. It’s the first time she’s ever removed it from the stacks and in fact, before Sherlock’s e-mail had arrived to highlight it in their archive listings, none of the staff had heard of it.

It is a large tome, bound in green and red leather. The colours of Christmas except that age has dulled them and the appearance does nothing so much as remind Sherlock of blood and gangrene.

The contents, he finds, are equally sinister.

The writing is thin and spidery; difficult even for the librarian to parse and in some places illegible to Sherlock. He has her turn pages and snaps picture after picture until, exhausted, she offers to scan him a few of the chapters that he’s interested in and e-mail them to him.

He agrees, and departs with his head full of the idea of the blood sacrifices required to make the sun rise.

It’s a very Aztec concept to find in the pages of a book written in London in the mid 1600’s. Between the froth of pseudo-ecclesiastical language, under the fervor and bile of the writer, Sherlock thinks it comes down to a concept of predator and prey.

On the other hand, it could be mere grotesquery. The etchings of flayed beasts are no better, nor worse, nor more meaningful than the morality paintings of Medieval England. The whole concept could be no more related to John than Fiji mermaids and blue bear skulls passed off as Yeti’s, unless, somehow… it is.

How could he begin to know the difference without testing it?

What bothers him most is that, even if he puts his cynicism aside, he cannot answer one basic question. Why John? Of the millions of people resident on the globe circa 1807, of the thousands available to whatever human tool of whatever magic that had made the Nutcracker, why did they choose John? Why this ordinary, undistinguished solider?

There are only two possibilities; either John was extraordinary somehow even as a mortal man, or the decision was completely arbitrary. Part of him riles in defense of John against this second option. He resents a world that would create something so magnificent and yet build it on such featureless foundations. It’s an insult both to John’s person and Sherlock’s sense of aesthetics. There must be something about John. There must.

He is still thinking about this when he finds the door to 221 Baker Street ajar. His blood freezes.

Another man may have called out; Sherlock looks. He approaches in silence, noting the way that the locks have been skillfully forced. Two men, at least, he thinks. One has stepped aside for the other to enter and in doing so kicked the twist of black plastic bin bags left by the refuse men to one side- so, two men; one deferential.

Sherlock slips through the door, hands free from his pockets should he find himself walking in on a fight. He pulls off his scarf to reduce the risk of strangulation, and notes that the doors to Mrs. Hudson’s flat are untouched. The faint scuffs on the carpet- insouciant men making no effort to disguise their steps- lead up the stairs alone.

Sherlock swings his head to the left. The shopping bags gone, with the hat; Mrs. Hudson’s out. He doesn’t waste time on relief. He climbs the stairs, back to the wall and leans to peer through the gap left between the lolling door to 221b and the doorframe.

It’s chaos in there.

He springs forwards; the silence tells him the intruders are gone, although perhaps not long gone; not long enough to say this happened hours ago, yet long enough to make a pursuit a folly. The tables are overturned.

Books spill across the floor, thrown from shelves and shaken. Loose pages steal traction from under his heels and make him slither forward. The kitchen cupboards have been wrenched open and the floor is a catastrophe of flour, eggs, glass shards, pickles, pots, saucepans and an explosion of angry Jackson Pollock yellow from a bottle of mustard. The fridge has been pulled out at the mains and tipped forward- what a crash that must have made- and lies on the floor like a blocky drunk, trickling fluid. The neighbours might complain, might not- it’s not like they don’t frequently hear irritating noises from the flat.

Two men, Sherlock amends, one carelessly strong.

He scans the floor for blood, chokes on a spill of chemicals; his bromines and iodine, his hydrochloric acid and he is forced to throw open the window and breath out of it for a moment.

The living room is equally savaged. The bowie knife has been removed from the mantle and used to scientifically gut the sofa, which sags on its legs, vomiting sponge onto the floor. Legs broken, Sherlock notes. Lifted then dropped. The destruction has not been wholly wanton, however. His violin, though covered in dust and debris, is intact upon the table. The trinkets in the glass case have been dislodged but the search there has been brief.

For it must have been a search.

Sherlock hesitates at the bottom of the stairs to John’s room. He calls his name.

No answer.

Sherlock climbs the stairs, breath still caught in his throat and while at first it had been the acid and second the dust, now it is nothing but raw fear.

“John?”

Here the violation of privacy feels more acute. The ruins of John’s bookshelf send a pain through Sherlock that he hadn’t expected, and he notes that here alone things are missing.

The box is gone; John’s kit; his rifle- always tucked in the corner of the shelf just behind where John lays his head to sleep- is missing.

“John…” Sherlock swallows, feels the bile wobble up and down in his throat along with his Adam’s apple. An overwhelming sense of failure washes over him, the likes of which he has never felt before.

He sinks to the floor, gazing around the destruction; seeing but without much answer to his observations. They must have been seen, he thinks; or someone has been hunting John since the moment he left Uncle Rudy’s possession. It need not even be personal; to this criminal, John could be nothing more than a means to an end; an item for a collection, perhaps. The last piece of some satanic wheel of power designed to bring he who completes it power beyond compare.

It’s out of Sherlock’s realm of experience and here he flounders between real possibility and ill-used imagination.

A faint noise makes him stop breathing. He lies, propped against the end of the disheveled bed, and listens with every fiber of his being. His pulse thumps. He hears it again; a soft, tremulous scraping noise. It lasts only about a second, but it’s enough for Sherlock to locate it. It’s coming from under him.

He twists and lowers his ear to the floor.

“John?”

It scrapes again and then strengthens itself to a knock.

Sherlock feels at the floor. The boards are old but tight together, and all he achieves by scraping along their edges with his fingernails is a splinter. He gets up and treads the room, hoping for a creak and while he finds two, neither will lift without tools.

Where the hell did John get in?

He puts the question aside- he needs to get John out.

Sherlock nearly falls down the stairs in his haste- he vaults them, half turns an ankle and then does the same on the second flight of stairs.

It’s a four-minute walk to the nearest hardware store. Sherlock does it in a minute. There are few other customers milling around and so hardly anyone to startle when he bursts in.

“Crowbar,” he blurts.

The man behind the counter stares at him. “What?”

“Crowbar- Crowbar!” Sherlock slaps his hands on the counter in frustration. “It’s an emergency. Move!”

“Jesus!” The man stumbles and points towards the side of the shop. Sherlock doesn’t wait- he dives in, finds what he wants and leaves, flinging his wallet at the gaping man’s feet as he goes. He halts a half-second at the door to throw out, “Thank you!” and then he’s gone.

He slams the door to the flat shut when he reenters, lest anyone decide to follow him, hauls himself gasping up to the top of the flat and begins a one-man assault on the floorboards.

The nails scream as they come up; he doesn’t dare work too close to where he calculates John to be in case he drives the iron into him by mistake, and bit-by-bit he has to work across to free the correct board.

It comes up with an eruption of ancient dirt and for a moment Sherlock’s heart leaps into his mouth because there, in the little hollow between the pilings beneath, he catches sight of a puddle of red.

It’s merely John’s coat.

John lifts his arm to reveal a face smeared grey. Sherlock throws the board and crowbar aside to lift him out.

“John. Speak to me.”

John is stiff from crawling in the confined dark, and shaken through and through. He grabs at Sherlock’s hand in a clumsy grip and nods, coughing.

“Are you hurt?”

A shake of the head. Sherlock would not want anyone to mistake his recent foray into religion as conversion, but he offers out silent and heartfelt thanks to the universe anyway.

He carries John down to the relatively calmer atmosphere of the bathroom. Minimally furnished, there wasn’t much here to destroy and what has been done can be disregarded as slightly more extreme clutter.

Sherlock pushes the toothbrushes out of the sink and sets John down in it, seating himself on the lid of the toilet and turning the tap on to a trickle. Wordlessly John thrusts his hands into the stream, not minding that it’s wetting the seat of his trousers, and wipes the muck from his face. When his hands are clean he cups them and drinks greedily, till his sleeves are soaked through.

“That’s enough,” he says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Sherlock turns off the water and fixes the plug into place.

“Are you hurt?” he asks again, unable to believe that he isn’t.

“Sore,” John says, voice hoarse, “Nothing permanent.” He fumbles with the buttons of his coat. “I need something clean,” he says, appealing away from the topic in hand.

“I’ll find something,” Sherlock promises.

He is an inelegant tailor, but a dress sock with three holes cut in the toe end and sheared off at the heel makes a rough tunic.

John washes in the sink until the water stops running grey, taking each piece of clothing off one at a time and laundering it. They accumulate across the back of the sink; the jacket bleeding dye, the cream trousers now rent at the knees. He must have been crawling through dust up to his chin; it’s gone down his collar and falls out in clumps as he pulls off his shirt.

He tugs off his boots and with them the little knife from its sheath. Sherlock’s heart skips a beat; the blade is dirty.

“What-?”

“Rat-“ John says, cutting him off. “Just a rat.”

While he finishes cleaning up, Sherlock sits on the toilet seat, eyes averted, and hastily teaches himself to sew a pair of trousers from a pair of boxer shorts.

John’s arms stick out of his makeshift top like a couple of sticks, and the trousers are short in the leg and bulky around the elastic at the top but between the two he’s covered.

Sherlock rights the armchairs, clears the worst of the mess from around the hearth and leaves John there to warm while he does his best to minimize the damage and stop Mrs. Hudson from barging in with a fluster.

It’s only after he’s managed to get things roughly secured and tolerable that he asks what happened.

John struggles to find words for it; he’s exhausted. Sherlock simplifies the question and starts at the end.

“How did you get under the floor?”

“Rat hole by the radiator pipe.” John looks up, old and solemn. “That’s always the first thing I look for in an old house.”

Sherlock can imagine it. He’d have to go round the skirting boards on his knees to find it, in the filthy corner under the radiator; a hole cut into the boards to allow for the pipe, chewed at the edges as wide as his wrist. A barn door to a rodent, it must have been a horrible squeeze for John.

John rubs thoughtfully at his sides; he scraped himself going down.

“The rat?”

“Surprised to see me,” John answers, looking at the fire and not seeing it at all. “So surprised I could kill it. Still there. Went over the body, got further in. Got lost. Couldn’t get back.”

“Who were they?”

John’s face looks pinched. “He knew I was here. He came singing up the stairs. ‘Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat- No! No! No! There isn’t any room and you can’t stay here’. The Irish man.”

Sherlock doesn’t know either song or man, but he doesn’t need to.

“He’s taken your things.”

John nods, nods deep and then suddenly lowers his head into his hands. “I know. He’ll come back for me. The day after Christmas when-“

“I won’t let him.”

“You won’t have a choice. There’s no choice that can save me,” John answers, despairing. “I am damned. We are both damned by this, Sherlock, and I am a coward.”

Sherlock stares at him.

“I am,” John repeats, numb. His hand touches his leg. “Have you guessed why I was shot? Back of the leg- that’s where you shoot at soldiers running away. So you can bring them back, and make them an example.”

“You were deserting?” Sherlock can’t believe it of him.

“It was- there was torture and siege and abuse; it wasn’t warfare. I was sick of Spain.”

“But-?” Sherlock doesn’t know enough of the history to make heads or tails of this. “You need to tell me everything.”

John stares at his own bare feet and then, when Sherlock thinks he won’t trust him, he does.

“There’s a family,” John says slowly. “I don’t know everything; I’ve had to piece it together… but there’s a family that should own me. Somehow… They did it wrong. The first attempt to make me only made me. It didn’t… bind me to them as I was supposed to have been. I was supposed to be a slave.”

Sherlock’s mind flies. “Bought awake once per year for the benefit of the family; to grant whatever they need. Their own personal Djinn.”

“They didn’t get it right,” John repeats. “They gave me too much freedom; it’s wild. I’m always moving. I grant one wish and no matter what the person says, I’m moved on. I don’t know how, but it’s without fail. I never wake up to the same person twice.”

“You said choice,” Sherlock said. “What choice? What’s so important about choice?”

John looks ill. “That’s the price,” he says. “I have to choose to grant the wish or not. It’s down to me, and I promise myself no more evil wishes. I will say no, I swear it to myself and then I am faced with one again…”

“So, there is no choice,” Sherlock concludes leaning back in his chair.

“There is,” John replies, “but I’m a coward and I can never take it. Grant the wish, or grant myself an end.”

“Do or die,” Sherlock says. He leans forward. “Let’s not forget one thing about this Christmas, however,” he says with sudden confidence. John looks at him, surprised and doubtful.

“What’s that?”

“Up till now, you haven’t had me.” Sherlock smiles at the challenge. “Tell me,” he demands, “About the Irish boy with the drill.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) John references the Innkeeper’s Song often performed in Children’s nursery performances of the Nativity:  
> Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat  
> No! No! No!  
> There isn’t any room  
> And you can’t stay here, There isn’t any room for strangers. The night maybe cold  
> And the wind maybe chill  
> And full of nasty noises in the dark  
> And dangers! No, there isn’t any room,  
> There isn’t any room,  
> There isn’t any room for strangers.  
> Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat  
> Yes! Yes! Yes!  
> There is a little room and you can stay here,  
> There is a little room for strangers.  
> The night maybe cold And the wind maybe chill  
> And full of nasty noises in the dark And dangers!  
> Yes, there is a little room, there is a little room There is a little room for strangers.


	5. Christmas Songs

**Christmas Songs**

“ _Come they told me pa-rum-pa-pum-pum_ ,” Jim beats the little tattoo of the song out on the arm of the chair that he’s straddling, examining the pages of the Arab’s book yet again.

Moran cleans his gun in silence, one wary eye on Jim. Things have been intense lately, and the more they go on with the plan the less he feels he understands it. The less he feels he understands it, the less he likes it.

“ _Little baby, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum._

 _I am a poor boy too pa-rum-pa-pum-pum_ …”

The songs are getting on Moran’s nerves. It’s always the same ones with the nonsense words and he can’t be sure if Jim knows that he sings them. Something about them- the endless repetition, the nasal quality of Jim’s voice maybe- puts his teeth on edge.

Jim walks the pair of tiny shoes across the page and sets them down. He has killed a cage of black mice and the blood has made a round brown dot on each item with which he is constructing his circle. Moran took the little corpses out back and tossed them over the hedge; they’d seemed pitiful.

“A miracle,” Jim mutters. He talks about that a lot. The strange fortune that brought The Nutcracker onto his radar.

“Worked it out?”

Jim stares at him until Moran feels uncomfortable. “Worked it out? Worked it out?” Jim mimics. “You’re talking to me. This is my inheritance. Worked it out…” he sneers. “I worked it all out when I was eight years old, tiger.”

“I just want to know it’ll work. I still think we should have taken the doll.”

“Noo, no, no, no!” Jim throws down pages in exasperation. “The doll is no use to us while he’s running around! Inert, Moran. He needs to be inert. Un-owned. Mine.”

Moran watches him a moment and then lowers his gaze back to his gun. Jim’s got that shadow about him again. It’s been growing since the start of December and he swears, when it’s dark and Jim’s angry, it thickens. He thinks it must have eyes.

He’s told Jim the gun is in case this Holmes figures too much out and tries to keep hold of the Doll beyond his allowance. What he really means is the gun is to get rid of any trouble. What he really means is that it’s to keep trouble away from him.

Whatever shape it takes.

Jim slides from the chair and makes a show of forgiveness and platitudes. He’s aware that he needs Moran; not just for the muscle. Moran bought him the book. Whatever strange things may happen, that’s irrefutable. Stolen from a house in India, brought back across the continent, written in the 10th century in some unknown desert, it predates the book Moriarty’s family had used to start all this in the 1800’s.

From what he can discern (and the books are all illegible to him), the red and green book had too many translation errors, too many second-hand sources to forge the spell accurately. With this, Jim can fill the cracks; make the Nutcracker bound beyond choice to him and him alone.

The money they can make from it. The very thought excites Moran.  
He’s always wanted to be rich.

Jim changes his tune to something older and darker.

“ _Under that bed there runs a flood:_  
_The bells of Paradise I heard them ring:_  
_The one half runs water, the other runs blood:_  
_And I love my Lord Jesus above anything_.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Moran complains. He clicks his handgun back together and tucks it in the back of his jeans.

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Sing that one. It’s not nice.” He especially dislikes the verse about the hound licking the knight’s blood. Who thinks of thinks like that?

“What song?” Jim asks and this gives Moran a long cold pause for breath because Jim is speaking and the song has not stopped. It goes on; Jim turns back to work, focused on completing as much of the spell with as much of the Nutcrackr as can be worked with and Moran sits and watches him with his blood chilling.

It’s the shadow, he realizes. The humming is coming from the shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim is singing 'The Little Drummer Boy', and 'Don in Yon Forest'. This second song has a variety of lyrics, some of which are very pagan sounding for a song about loving Jesus. The version I know is A.L. Lloyd's version, which quite rightly was first released on an album called Great British Ballards Not Included in the Child's Collection. Which of course, I listened to as a child and found horrifying. (Although I secretly enjoyed the one about Jesus getting spanked for drowning people. Also check out the Cherry Tree Carol for Joseph being all 'You want cherries, Mary? Well, why don't you go and ask your baby daddy, HMM?')
> 
> You can read more about it and the different versions of the lyrics here: https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/downinyonforest.html
> 
> tl;dr, English folk songs are weird and hilarious and dark and dirty.


	6. Saint Nicholas

**Saint Nicholas**

It begins on Christmas Eve; too early. The other side has the bloodstained silk, the sword, the rifle and the oldest parts of the magic. They have the blood of rats and sacrifice. They have the words. They have drawn the circle.

Sherlock feels it first as a jerk behind his lungs, startling enough that he drops his violin and feels at his chest.

John stands up on the hearth, looking at his hands with deep worry.

“It’s starting now,” he says.

Breathless, Sherlock turns to him. “How?”

“They’re trying to bind as much of me as possible to them, I think. The magic doesn’t like being changed.”

Sherlock feels it in his blood- the throb of something unnatural. It is already dark out and the lamps are lit. He twitches the curtains, unsettled, and notices that a fog is rising. That can’t be natural either.

“Sherlock,” John says. “I want you to know. Be careful. I can’t put his wish into words but I saw it- another boy died. He’s a killer. He has a certain control over it.” John sounds guilty.

Sherlock considers the wanton destruction of the flat, which he’s only been able to partially repair. A child whose deepest wish is to murder? “He’s mad, you mean.”

“He was bad as a child, now I think he’s something more. He’s fixated on owning the magic.”

“And you.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Whatever happens,” John says, “I’m going to grant your wish.”

“How can I stop him?”

“I don’t know,” John answers, “We’re at a disadvantage Sherlock. He’s been studying this all his life; all he had to do was find me and now he has.”

“Can we find him?” Sherlock asks.

John points at the wall. “We don’t have to.”

Sherlock turns and stares. The walls are fading into the fog; he can smell the cold and earth. He can smell snow on the air, and pine.

“Sherlock,” John says urgently as the floor starts to vanish into it. Sherlock stoops and plucks him into his arms. John sits in the crook of his elbow, knife drawn.

“John, what will happen?”

“We go into the forest, you’ll come out. I promise, Sherlock. You’ll be safe.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking,” Sherlock says, uneasy. He wishes he were armed. John’s knife is sharp- it’ll do nothing against two men if they decide to make this a fight.

He arms himself instead with the one weapon that has always served him well- information. He flicks again through the photographs of the pages from The Living Doll; which he has realized is flawed but there must be a clue there somewhere.

He freezes. There’s a trickle of light coming from somewhere and a humming; something old and minor. Circles, Sherlock thinks. He saw them in the book.

“Here we go. Stay close. Whatever happens…” John grips at his arm.

There’s no running away from this. John is the centre of the circle within the circles and it’s cold; the air is biting and the pine trees around them show like vague fingers in the gloom.

“ _Down in yon forest there stands a hall. The bells of Paradise, I heard them ring;_ ”

It’s a nasal, whining voice, but there are bells ringing, Sherlock realizes. Distant, from the opposite side to the humming.

“Sleigh bells?”

“Coins. The old man,” John says. He’s nervous, peering into the fog. This isn’t like normal. Typically it’s just him and the fog, the receiver of the wish and the old man to observe. This time it’s a little more crowded.

The circles start to merge. Figures emerge from the gloom, weirdly lit from below. On one side the fog seems darker, on the other brighter. Sherlock can still smell the snow.

Something seems to move them against their own accord. The tall man with the gold book and the rifle, the small man with the bloodstained silk and the stolen sack of John’s possessions. They space out- three corners of an unbalanced square.

The old man is less distinct. He stays in the fog, leaning on a stick, and now and then the cloud parts enough to give Sherlock a glimpse of a long beard and loops of coins on the staff and at his belt.

The nasal voice salutes them. “Hope you don’t mind; waiting for Christmas is always such a bore and me, I get soooo impatient.”

“Your circle is smeared,” Sherlock says, not looking at him. “You’re messing with it and it doesn’t like it.”

“Oh but it likes me. It’s on my side.” The shadow wavers and seems to become more solid. To Sherlock’s right, a pair of eyes watches from the fog, calm and reserved. To the left there are three; the tall man who is nervous, the darting grin of the small man and something else just behind him.

‘This is old,’ Sherlock thinks. ‘This is very old.’ This is every story he was told as a child- don’t go into the woods at night, the dark and the light, the good and the bad and ugly things; anger or kindness. This is blood put down on the snow to make the winter go away. This is spitting to keep out the devil and iron nailed over your door.

‘Where’s the rest?’ Sherlock thinks, frowning. Somehow he feels an innate interpretation of their roles. There is evil, he can see, and evil’s tool. John is the fulcrum on which all of this is moving; the old man glows benignly but he feels like an observer, pulled in against his will. ‘Where’s the other side?’

He finds himself all too aware of the empty corner of the square.

Outside the forest, the bells of London begin to chime for midnight. It is Christmas- not the end of it but the start. Sherlock shifts, trying to keep both in his sight. Ice crunches beneath his heels.

“Sherlock? What’s your wish?” John says. The glow has spread to him too now; faint but discernable thanks to the darkness of the fog.

“Not yet,” Sherlock returns. He looks at him. John’s face has gone blank as porcelain. More like a doll than ever. “I need more time.”

“There isn’t any; I just need to see it and then I’ll grant it.”

“No,” Sherlock says stubbornly. If John does, his bond to Sherlock will be broken. Sherlock can physically see it now, a little, weak thread of light.  
The Irish man laughs.

“Get on with it,” he mocks and the shadow grates, “ _The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling for you but not for me, and the little devil’s how they sing-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me._ ”

“Shut up!”

Sherlock closes his eyes. The information is there, in his head. He feels for it. All of this; built up and built up, Arabic magic mixed with something else, added to and muddied by Europeans and now this new mutation. It’s complex.

“Make it simple,” he mutters to himself. Why did they do all this to begin with? Who owns all of the magic really? Who is this between?

The cold wind caresses his ears making them ache, the ice around his feet makes them cold.

“Winter,” he says.

“Sherlock?”

“What are you doing?”

The strands of light are moving. Sherlock bends and buries his hands in the snow. “You’re clever,” Sherlock says, “But go back far enough and they didn’t need words, or accessories. Not to beat you.”

The shadow roils behind the Irish man and Sherlock can see it now; that creeping beast, that biter of children and gross opportunist throughout the long winter when most animals are decently sleeping. That spreader of disease; that thief. John always checks for them.

“Rat.” Sherlock hisses.

The old man jingles as he steps forward, even as Moriarty and his shadow emit a squeal of hatred.

“Oh, I see it now.” Sherlock looks around, his mind lighting up with understanding, which isn’t quite his own. The empty corner seems to sing to him with bells and ice.

“Balance; your ancestor couldn’t make a spell without him- patron saint of the feast. You made a child’s toy of John and thought no one would stand in his corner.” Sherlock rises, leaving John on the floor, his fists full of snow. “Protection.”

The rat lunges but is stopped by some hidden line. The golden book clatters to the ground. Moran has his rifle raised, but no idea who to shoot. Sherlock can smell his panic. This isn’t what he signed up for. Moriarty seems to writhe.

The old man can do nothing but watch- his presence is enough.

Sherlock feels for the power. The darkest part of winter stands before him; he must find the brightest part of it. His fingers are numb with cold but he feels it; the glint of light on snow, the white sheen of a sunbeam through an icicle.

“Here’s a fact,” Sherlock says, over the drumming humming mad fury of the rat. “This is science. You never win. The sun will always rise, the night will always end- the snow will melt. More than a million years of invention work against you. We ignore the setting of the sun and put on the lights. We don’t feel the cold; we play with it.”

“Sherlock!”

The rat leaps with everything it has; the gun roars, but Sherlock is being risen on a wave of old, old power that isn’t his own and can’t be stopped. It’s been waiting, he thinks, caught up in this stupid round-and-round-and-roundabout-again for two hundred years, lacking just a vessel to use. The result of one ambitious man upsetting something he had no right to touch.

Even the rat seems to want to end it, Sherlock thinks. It wants the fight, not the stalemate.

Sherlock claps his hands together, full of snow, in front of the rat’s face. The light is blinding.

Later neither of them can say exactly what happened. There was light; there was the flash of something like a sword and the rat vanished. John thought he saw Moriarty stumbling back, his face a wide ‘O’ of shock and a rose of blood blooming through his shirt from the stray bullet.

There had been other people; other attempts, or else time here is as strange as the forest. They blow past in a crowd; a horde of rats, soldiers of all nations, snowflakes and last, as Sherlock turns, a smiling being in white passes right through him, leaving him with a taste of sugar.

The forest grows quiet as the battle fades. The fog lightens.

Sherlock turns back and finds John still sitting in the middle of the circle, restored. He rises to his feet, one hand on the hilt of his sword, eyes lifted under his hat. He looks faintly amazed; a bit lost.

Sherlock looks down, turns his hands over; his sleeves are as white as he’s ever seen. The old man jangles, wordless and smiling as he leans on his staff. The shadows have fled.  
“What’s your wish, Sherlock?”

Sherlock kneels on the ground before him. The circles have met at last, overlapping. John shoulders his pack, ready to march. They are, in both senses of the word, not out of the woods yet.

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” John answers. “To wherever the magic pulls me. Let me grant your wish, Sherlock.”

“I never showed you all of London.”

“You only had a month, Sherlock.” John smiles, “You managed plenty. I should thank you. I’ve got a lot to thank you for.” He comes forward, places his hands on Sherlock’s knees. “Maybe you can choose for me. The next one. Ruby put me in the post to you, and there was no guarantee I’d arrive, but I did. Choose someone for me.”

It’s unfair, Sherlock thinks. The bells are ringing. Despite himself, he feels something in him wishing. The light is there.

“Will you grant it,” the old man asks.

“Don’t,” Sherlock begs.

“I will,” John replies, eyes on him. “Of course I will.”

The coins scatter, the fog falls, and the wish is granted.

\----

John feels breath on his face as he wakes, breathes against the confines of his belt. He stirs, confused, his last memories of snow and rats, and there’s a weight on his body.

Have they left the lid on him?

He can see a ceiling, which must be very low; perhaps he’s under a shelf or on one. He’ll have to be careful getting out. He pushes, blinking and wincing at the light, trying to rise. A limb moves at his side.

Sherlock lifts his head, his hair in disarray. John stares at him.

“Sherlock?” His heart sinks in horror. This isn’t what he wanted. How could Sherlock have wished for this; to be part of the spell for all time; they’ll be separated. One doll is already one too many-

“Why did you wish this?” John asks, distraught. “How could you be so stupid!?”

“John?” Sherlock rises a little, stiff, his clothes still brilliantine white. “John, you’re the perfect size.” He fumbles, touching John’s face, amazed. “Look at you.”

“I’m not- you’ve-“ John breaks off because he’s noticed the wall behind Sherlock. The pattern of the wallpaper looks small. He holds his hand up to compare and then, in a rush, staggers to his feet.

His own height gives him a weird sense of vertigo. He can see the tops of the tables; the view from the window down to the cars on the road, the seat of the sofa, all of the floor. His knees go weak and Sherlock catches him heavily. Too heavy to hold up. They sag together back to the floor, Sherlock’s back to the armchair.

John puts his hand against Sherlock’s. It’s smaller, but not terribly so.

“It’s Christmas day, John,” Sherlock murmurs in his ear. “You granted the wish and you’re still awake.”

John grasps at his hand, breathing hard with wonder. “I didn’t see your wish.”

“I think you’re seeing it now,” Sherlock says, a smile in his voice.

John tilts his head back to look at him. Overcome, he reaches up and grasps Sherlock, pulling him close. Sherlock doesn’t let go.

“I’m alive,” John croaks against the side of his face. “I’m alive again. You wished for me.” It is overwhelming. He has freedom again; no living name nor convenience, but is neither aware of this nor does he care. He could walk down the stairs in a matter of mere paces and walk through London. He could sit in the corner of an inn and drink and watch the people come and go with the disinterest of a stranger. He could leave London; leave England. Travel and see how all the places in this new time have been changed. He could cross the sea in a few hours and explore the new world.

With the beat of Sherlock’s heart in his ear, he knows that he can, but he won’t. Not alone. He turns, slightly, serious.

“You love me.”

“I-“ Sherlock starts, and the words are lost in the crush of John’s lips against his own.

“Marry me,” John says, when they breathe again, the red of his coat against the white of Sherlock’s, like blood on snow, like peppermint, “I read the news; it’s a fair law here now. Marry me.”

Sherlock feels a laugh bubbling up as the armchair slips back under their weight, tumbling them to the floor, and John’s eyes are blue and bright as the winter sky, full of life.

Something clinks free from John’s pocket. They will find fistfuls of coins, in John’s pockets, in his knapsack. Outside a rare snow is falling, despite the sunshine. Not that it matters. All of the gold and silver Sherlock wants is in John’s hair. They’re each warm enough to ignore any ice. He kisses him.

“Yes,” he says.


	7. An Epilogue of Sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written much later, as a short Tumblr Fic.

**An Epilogue of Sorts**

John’s not in the living room when Sherlock comes in and the room is grey with cold.

“John?”

The man’s coat is on the coat stand, his shoes by the door and the laptop is left on the coffee table, screen open. He’s around. Not downstairs; he’d have put his shoes on. Sherlock treads the stairs upwards, and finds him.

John’s face is a shade paler than the bulky white jumper he’s wearing.

“Oh.” he says, as Sherlock comes in. He sets the box down on the bed and leans back to check the redundant clock on the nightstand. “Didn’t realise what time it was. How was the morgue? Exciting?”

“Dead boring,” Sherlock says, just to make the corner of John’s mouth twitch. “You should have come.”

John’s fingernails scrape the sides of the box. Embarrassed, he puts the lid on over the hollow in the velvet and puts it back, where it lives now, on the shelf.

“December the 6th,” he says.

“I know.”

He’ll be drawn up here again to feel the weight of the box in his hands on Christmas Day as well. Other than that, he’s never touched it. Sherlock stands for a moment on the threshold. “I’m going downstairs,” he states and turns around. John follows him, footsteps heavy. He brushes past Sherlock and starts tutting around the living room as a distraction.

“You’re not going to turn back,” Sherlock says, growls, into John’s collar, shivering. The windows are black with early nightfall, and frost is already creeping up the panes. Sherlock’s breath condensates in the fibres of John’s jumper. 　

John says, hand tight against Sherlock’s, “Let’s burn it.”

John kindles the fire, Sherlock fetches the box. It’s smooth and beautiful; a deep red wood with tiny gold clasps. It almost seems a pity- there’s nothing else like it in the whole world. John takes it from him and they sit and watch the fire grow until it’s big enough to do the job.

John eases open the lid and looks at the interior- the rumpled green velvet and the tiny drawer that still contains his kit, except the uniform. He takes a breath, and then digs his fingers into the velvet, ripping it free.

It writhes up into nothingness in the flames, making them sputter. The box is left with an ugly space, shreds of cloth caught in the ancient glue. John pulls the drawer open and takes out the kit bag.

Sherlock sees him contemplate it; the catharsis of opening the bag and picking out each tiny item- the canteen, the shaving kit, the boots, the sewing kit, the blanket- and throwing them one at a time to the flames. Instead, he tosses the whole thing lightly into the heart of the fire.

He waits a heartbeat and then reaches out the box with his other hand and feeds it to the back of the grate. Done.

After a while, when the varnish on the wood is bubbling and the fire crackling, Sherlock says, “What about the uniform?”

It’s in the back of the cupboard, man-sized, hidden away. Sherlock’s suit, still as pure white as it had been last Christmas when they’d blown out of the snow and back to reality, hangs next to it. The clothes smell of ice, and pine trees and burnt sugar. Even further back is John’s sword, silver and sharp, hidden inside one of Sherlock’s dog-earred fencing top bag.

“Later,” John says. “I’ve got plans for those jackets.”

He puts out an arm for him to make himself comfortable under. The flames lick up the chimney. Already the box is just an angular piece of wood in the fire. The firelight glistens over the ring on John’s finger. Sherlock touches it.

Something of a premature gift given that John is still not officially a person. Mycroft is hurrying things along but even he can’t do a huge amount to speed up the snail’s tread of bureaucracy when there’s no real urgency for it to be done.

A few more months maybe, and John will have a piece of paper to confirm who he has become. Next Christmas, John thinks, he might get his chance to put those jackets to use. The wood slumps in the fire.

“Better?” Sherlock wants to know. Perhaps later, if John’s in the mood, he might convince him to help clear the furniture to one side and get the sword out.

John considers, thoughts much on the same line. “Never better,” he says.


End file.
